When you go to the dentist, what do you expect? That they will check your teeth, see if you need any fillings, give you some advice on oral hygiene? You probably don’t expect that they will teach your child to read, tackle youth unemployment or solve poverty.

But when it comes to education, politicians are remarkably relaxed about loading wider social responsibilities on to schools. The suggestion from Alan Milburn, a former minister and now a senior government adviser, is that primary schools – that is, schools that educate children aged four to 11 – should identify children who might not be in education, employment or training at the age of 16. “The warning signs are there from a very early, early age. You know, frankly from preschool,” he said. “So, definitely primary schools should be identifying children who are at risk of being Neet. And secondary schools and other services should be intercepting, intervening, supporting and helping those young people to get on a different path.”

Laudable in theory, but we need a bit of realism about what it is fair to make schools responsible for, and if making them responsible for so many things is going to cause more problems than it solves.

Defenders of this approach will argue that big problems have many causes, so we need a holistic response that breaks down institutional silos. I’d argue that by making people responsible for outcomes they have very little control over, you risk demoralising them and distracting them from what they........

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